The Distributist Review: October 2004

German Home Schoolers Stand Up To Government

This report is from the neo-conservative web news giant WorldNetDaily. A group of seven fathers, belonging to the Twelve Tribes Community - an Evangelical Protestant sect - were taken to jail for refusing to pay fines to the German government. Why? The fines were imposed on these families because they refuse to cease home-schooling their children, and refuse to send them to the state-run schools.

WorldNetDaily also reported in early September of other instances where the actions of the German government drove two other families out of their homeland because they wanted to home-school. In a third instance, a judge ruling against a home-schooling family claimed parents "had no rights to have input" regarding teaching material and subjects for their children.

He even said that "fundamentalist Christians" who home-school are not protected by Germany's constitution. I repeat, NOT protected.

Belloc - in his work Essays of a Catholic, written in 1931 - saw what was coming down the road regarding big government's interference in education, as well as it's lust to dominate the right to teach children. In Chapter 11 of the book, entitled "The Schools", Belloc points out that...

"The education of the child belongs properly to the parent, and not to the State. The family is prior to the State in right, and this is particularly true of rights over children."

Distributism, historically, has been always against compulsory education laws. This remains true today, and we advocate such laws be repealed worldwide, no matter how long it takes. In the meantime, it is imperative we help to strengthen laws and policies protecting families who home-school their children. And as for the public schools, let them be guided by the lowest level of government, whether twon, city or county.

And as a suggestion on my own part, try to fashion the public schools that they can become - over time - both teacher-run and teacher-managed, like a co-operative of sorts. Let parents and teachers set up the curriculum and studies for their community, so as to further mutual assistance between both groups, rather than antagonism.

As for Germany's policy against home-school education, it must be smashed to pieces. The second WorldNetDaily report has the address for a legal group defending all German home-schoolers. We here at the DR encourage our readers world-wide to contact them. Let's help them fight for the Twelve Tribes families and the right to parental control of a child''s education in Germany.

Interview with Joseph Pearce

Along with the Schumacher article is a Godspy interview with Joseph Pearce. It was - in part - the writings of both Chesterton and Schumacher that led Pearce, a British neo-fascist in his youth, away from that poisonous ideology and into both Catholicism and Distributism. In the interview, he advocates evangelizing Green Party members with both the Catholic gospel and Distributist ideals.

We at the Review highly recommend his books, starting with his biographies of Belloc and Chesterton. Most of his works are published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco.

Source of Schumacher's Theories

This article is from the book "Literary Converts" by Joseph Pearce, one of the most dynamic English language biography authors of the last decade or more. He is a Writer in Residence and Professor of Literature at Ave Maria College in Michigan, and Co-Editor of the Saint Austin Review magazine. This article comes from the neo-Catholic news and opinion website Godspy.

E. F. Schumacher, a disciple of Leopold Kohr - author of the classic work "The Breakdown of Nations" - crafted the Seventies' economic book "Small Is Beautiful". His work has helped to develop Distributist Thought down the years. The article by Pearce shows Schumacher's searching for truth and life's ultimate meaning, leading him to his conversion to Catholicism in 1971. It was Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter "Humanae Vitae" that was one of the catalysts that finally led him "home to Rome".

A good solid read by Pearce on one of the legitimate successors of Belloc and Chesterton.

Israeli Taxpayers Oppressed

This report comes from the Israeli news website Maariv International, via the neo-conservative news website giant WorldNetDaily. The State of Israel, still crushed under the weight of a three year long recession, is one of the least productive economies in the developed world. Worse yet, they pay the highest taxes of any developed country.

The Israeli worker and business owner has enough troubles already without this burden on their backs. Unfortunately, their national economy and political structure aim toward Socialism. The chains of government hyper-intervention must be broken. Turning to Distributism will help them be a freer state than they have been up to now.

Once-ignored consumer debts are focus of booming industry

On page one of today's Wall St. Journal, a new kind of bill collector has surfaced, one who goes after small debts. Asset Acceptance purchases consumer debt (often as little as two cents on the dollar) that creditors have given up on (usually small amounts) and goes after the debtor. How it accomplishes this is with an army of lawyers that file thousands of small-claims each year. You can see how this works usury (which should be illegal) creates debts that people can't pay so the usurers take advantage of a system that produces more lawyers than there are jobs to purchase lawyers at a discount to go after debtors, who use the small claims court system which was never intended for professional legal representation and debt collection.

Kidnapping 'outsourced' in Bihar- The Times of India

The leading country of outsourcing is having its own outsourcing problem. Now kidnap gangs are "outsourcing" the kidnaps to unemployed youth in exchange for large comissions according The Times of India. It shows that even in India the feelings about the word "outsourcing" are not as pleasant as many suggest.

The controversy over the "outsourced" hunt for Osama

If anything can tell you that outsourcing has become a bad word, it is the controversy over whether the hunt for Osama bin Laden was "outsourced". I have a link to one of the many stories about this controversy but whether the accusation is true or not outsourcing has become a bad word in the US and advocates of it better understand despite its short-sighted economic attractiveness, it will remain that way.

Former National ESOP head is a Florida house candidate

The St. Petersburg Times has an article on a Florida state house race which might decide the ability of the ability of Republicans to force legislation through. What is interesting to distributists is that the Democrat running is Dee Thomas, who formed one of first Tampa Bay area employee-owned companies and was the first woman to head the National Employee Stock Ownership Plan Association . I do hope if Dee is elected it will help the cause of ESOPs in Florida.

Business Report - Employees are the ideal candidates for a BEE partnership

Article in the South African Business Report argues that employees are the best candidate's for Black Economic Empowerment. It gives some statistics stating that such employee-owned firms are more stable and outperform comparable non-employee owned firms. Of course it doesn't give the biggest reason and that is of economic justice.

Chesterton quote in the Philipines

The Manilla Times reporting on Philipine General Garcia has emassed a P185 million dollar fortune. The article quotes Chesterton in this paragraph:

The lure of corruption must be hard to resist. Being a materialistic people, we’re so susceptible. The promise of easy money tickles, the prospect of instant wealth titillates. The English author, G.K. Chesterton, put it aptly: “Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.” I heard someone say on television recently that the best way to deal with temptation is to succumb to it. We Filipinos have been doing a lot of succumbing for a long time now.

Ferrara Against the Libertarians

This link is to a massive, footnoted broadside against libertarian capitalism by Christopher Ferrara, a columnist for the Traditional Catholic bi-weekly The Remnant. Mr. Ferrara is also head of the American Catholic Lawyers Association (ACLA), a Traditional Catholic opponent of both the secular left-wing ACLU and their Evangelical Protestant foes in the ACLJ - at least in some religious matters.

Ferrara makes a huge, detailed critique of the flaws of libertarian capitalist thinking, especially of two of it's "leading lights", Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Overall, it is solid reading, very thoughtful in it's analysis from a Traditional Catholic standpoint.

One minor point of disagreement with Ferrara is his comparison of modern day Malta, which is run under mostly Catholic auspices. He compares it to straw-man style "distributist" visions of rude cabins and cow farms, as he mentions briefly near the end of his article. What the intent or context of what he said is is unknown - at least to myself - but this is the only fly in the soup, so to speak.

This is, overall, a powerhouse of an essay and is highly recommended.

Patients outsource their care to India

Because of lower medical rates many patients are traveling to India for expensive surgeries according to the Kansas City Star. Of course much of this problem comes from a medical system in which a great deal of the cost of medical school is financed, excessive specialist salaries and soaring malpractice insurance rates.

Winegrowers hope to harvest fruitful future through co-op

Apparently North Carolina wineries have combined their efforts together to form a cooperative ( AP Wire | 10/24/2004 | Winegrowers hope to harvest fruitful future through co-op) . The label is called Carolina Harvest.

Nitze Is Honored at Capital Memorial Service - Chesterton is quoted

Arms negotiator Paul Nitze had his funeral at the National Cathedral yesterday (The New York Times > Washington > Nitze Is Honored at Capital Memorial Service ) and his son quoted a few lines from Chesterton saying:

In a veiled reference to current American foreign policy and to his father's reputation as a rigorous thinker, Mr. Nitze cited a hymn by G. K. Chesterton as "a text'' for his father's life. The hymn asks for deliverance "from all that terror teaches, from lies of tongue and pen, from all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men.''

This is of course from "A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar" and it goes like this (courtesty of Chesterton.org):

O God of earth and altar,

Bow down and hear our cry,

Our earthly rulers falter,

Our people drift and die;

The walls of gold entomb us,

The swords of scorn divide,

Take not thy thunder from us,

But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,

From lies of tongue and pen,

From all the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men,

From sale and profanation

Of honour and the sword,

From sleep and from damnation,

Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether

The prince and priest and thrall,

Bind all our lives together,

Smite us and save us all;

In ire and exultation

Aflame with faith, and free,

Lift up a living nation,

A single sword to thee.

Key-chain remote control turns off most television sets

Key-chain remote control turns off most television sets
In case you haven't heard about this device that could save civilization here is the info:

A new key-chain gadget that lets people turn off most TV sets — anywhere from airports to restaurants — is selling at a faster clip than it would take most people to surf the channels on their boob tubes.

“I thought there would just be a trickle, but we are swamped,” inventor Mitch Altman of San Francisco said Tuesday. “I didn’t know there were so many people who were into turning TV off.”

Hundreds of orders for Altman’s $14.99 TV-B-Gone gadget poured in Tuesday after the tiny remote control was announced in Wired magazine and other online media outlets. At times, the unexpected attention overloaded and crashed the Web site of his company, Cornfield Electronics.

The key-chain fob works like a universal remote control but one that only turns TV sets on or off. With a zap of a button, the gizmo goes through a string of about 200 infrared codes that controls the power of about 1,000 TV models. Altman said the majority of TV sets should react within 17 seconds, though it takes a little more than a minute for the gizmo to emit all the trigger codes.

Another excert:

He has tested the TV-B-Gone remote discreetly in many places, including in other countries, and — with the exception of Hong Kong — says he usually gets little to no reaction from others after the background TV noise and glare disappear.

But he said he would never dare silently kill the machines in places like sports bars, where patrons expect TV sets to be on.

I become more and more convinced that commercial TV may be wrong for much of the world's problems in the last fifty years. The origin of the word sabotage according to Word Origins website is:

It is suggested by some that this term for wanton destruction derives from striking workers throwing wooden shoes, or sabot, into machinery in order to destroy it. This belief was popularized when it was repeated in one of the Star Trek movies.

Sabotage does indeed derive from the French sabot and from striking workers, but not in the sense suggested. While sabot can mean a wooden shoe, it can also mean a metal shoe or clamp for holding a piece of metal in place (it can also mean a type of anti-tank ammunition, but that's another story). The second sense is what sabotage is derived from.

Specifically, sabotage comes from the practice by striking French railway workers of cutting the sabot that held railroad tracks in place. The word appears in English in 1910 and early use specifically refers to the French railroad strikers.

Perhaps this could be our bit of sabotage against our TV lords.

India Sees Kerry's Anti-Outsourcing Stance As Mere Rhetoric

India Sees Kerry's Anti-Outsourcing Stance As Mere Rhetoric -- 10/13/2004 accoring to Cybercast news service. Blurbs from the article:

That view was bolstered, two weeks ago, by widely-reported comments by former Clinton administration official Strobe Talbott, now president of the Brookings Institution.

"Outsourcing will continue regardless of who wins in the November elections," he was quoted as telling reporters in India.

"Good economic sense will prevail over politics," added Talbott, who said of Kerry: "His government's attitude towards outsourcing would be very different to his campaign..."

More:

During a visit to the U.S. last week, India's Harvard-educated finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, also described Kerry's stance on outsourcing as "pre-election rhetoric."

"Business understands very well that outsourcing brings insourcing and keeps it competitive," he was quoted as saying in New York. "Nobody questions the wisdom of outsourcing."

I think if Kerry doesn't do a lot towards ending outsourcing the wrath against him will be much worse than the reaction of unions towards Clinton's signing of NAFTA. Clinton was not trusted much by Democrats because of his DLC pedigree. Kerry is the protegeee of Sen. Ted Kennedy and much more will be expected.

Arianna Huffington has a list of the top outsourcing contributors to George Bush's campaign of course the site is little better than a diatribe against Bush so in defense I also added a list of the outsourcing Kerry supporters from this blurb at the Washington Times:

As for Mr. Kerry's complaint about "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who engage in outsourcing, it turns out many are Mr. Kerry's biggest supporters. If you look in Lou Dobbs' new book, "Exporting America," there is a list of 40 pro-Kerry business leaders whose companies are among this country's biggest outsourcers, including Robert Rubin, a top executive at Citigroup; Theodore Waitt, chairman of Gateway; and Robert Haas, chairman of Levi Strauss.

Of course the blurb has its own problems because it seems to endorse the continual drumbeat of the free traders and has some selective statistics (looking at gross employment figures rather than looking at wage rates in the bottom half of our country for instance).

Natasha's story

Outsource outrage also has a story about Natasha, who was flown to India and later found out after she had been fired that she had been training her replacement. Natsha has gone from making $90,000 per year, to being laid off for the last six months while raising her six-year old son who has sickle-cell anemia.

OutsourceOutrage.com

OutsourceOutrage.com has a interesting video with Jason Alexander as a Bush aid trying to explain where the jobs in the world are now that we have embraced outsourcing. While there are some jabs about the Bush administration's axis of evil the video is pretty humorous. The site overall is pretty anti-Bush but I don't think if you look at the outsourcing policies of the Bush administration you can come out with admiration towards Bush.

Co-op ready to share profits

In another good example why cooperatives are much better than the run of the mill corporation icCoventry is reporting that Midlands Co-operative Society has pledged to plough one percentage of its profits back into the communities that it serves. Wal-Mart, which is often considered a leading example of corporate charitable giving, gave about 0.89% of its profits to charity last year. In addition Midlands will give an additional couple of percentage points of charitable gift giving in certain communities to kick off its campaign.

House panel considers risks of co-op buyout

The Dutch banking giant Rabobank is taking over Farm Credit Services of America, the Nebraska based cooperative that is part of the U.S. nationwide Farm Credit Services according to Land and Livestock Post News. Many in the Farm Credit Services network are worried that the sound finances of the entire institution could be endangered if member organizations can drop out and take their assets with them.

The House Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Rural Development and Research doesn't seem too wild about the transaction and the takeover has yet to be approved by the Farm Credit Services of America shareholders or by federal regulators. Many are insisting a law be written to prevent this kind of transaction. Of course bankers are enthusiastic about such a transaction since removing a farm lender reduces competition (of course they never say that). Moreover anyone who has followed agriculture knows that for every farm you can subdivide it into many rural homes of a much greater worth. Of course the declining importance of individual farmers has caused speculation that the Nebraska State Fair is endanger of being shut down.

because of the strong Farm Services co-op credit systems, agricultural co-ops are one of the few bright spots in co-operatives in the United States. Perhaps we are seeing the end to that.

This is one case where political pressure can be brought. I'd write any of those members on the ag subcommittee and tell them that you don't want to see this form or credit die off to farmers.

Dude, where's my job?

In Today's Arizona State University Web Devil (Tuesday, October 19, 2004) ASU student Lily Yan comments on the dismal outsourcing trend noting that:

Both President Bush and Sen. Kerry touched on this issue during Wednesday's debate, yet neither candidate was able to promise much in terms of American job security.

Bush, who has been accused of rewarding companies that outsourced jobs with tax breaks, discussed how the root of job security is in education, and he diverted the issue completely.

Kerry's rhetoric included tax credits for businesses that continue to hire at home, but he admitted, "outsourcing is going to happen." In addition, Lou Dobbs' new book, "Exporting America," exposes that 40 out of 200 of Kerry's major supporters are also top executives of outsourcing companies.

The senator wants to "level the playing field," yet he benefits from those that are most advantageous on the field. This leads me to believe that maybe these two candidates can agree on something.

Probably even more end of the article it says

Lily Yan is a political science and journalism junior who doesn't want her job to be shipped to India.

Sorry Lily, I wouldn't count on that.

The first Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

On the distributism mailing list Robert Waldrop has a report on the first Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Quite hopeful and sounds like it was great fun. If you don't subscribe to the Yahoo! distributism mailing list, please do. The pumpkin pie (and its recipe) sounded exceptionally good. Pumpkin pie, mmm...

You think you own your DVD, not in the future

One thing that has bugged Hollywood is if you could keep a DVD in very good shape (i.e. you don't have kids) it has a very long shelf life. The solution: DVD's that are self-erasing. Howard Rosenman's new independent film "Noel" will be available on disposable DVD's sold on Amazon.com. The $4.99 disks will be coated with chemical that makes it unusable 48 hours after the packed is opened. Walt Disney is also using the technology known as FlexPlay as an alternative to rental DVD's. Remember Disney was opposed to DVD's early on because of fears that DVD's would erode the value of its film catalog.

Outsourcing booms, although quietly amid political heat

In today's WSJ (Wall St. Journal Monday, October 18, 2004 p. B1) says although U.S. companies are reluctant to talk about outsourcing the practice is actually accelerating but many companies are waiting for the elections to be over with before announcing orders. This is according to Suresh Senapty, CFO of Wipro Ltd., a large Indian technology-outsourcing company based in Bangalore. In another part of the article two other Indian information-technology companies showed quarterly revenue increases of 44% and 52%.
'Nuff said...

Scottish Co-op set for Safeway bid - Evening Times

According to the Evening Times the Scottish Co-Op is buying 50 smaller safeway stores in remote areas of Scotland. Cooperatives are certainly an improvement upon the chain corporation supermarket. Any movement for a more just system of purchasing will lead to distributism.

Roanoke.com - Business Stories -Grants help Shenandoah turkey co-op move closer to purchase of Pilgrim's Pride plant

Roanoke.com - Business Stories -Grants help Shenandoah turkey co-op move closer to purchase of Pilgrim's Pride plant

Quote from the article:

Pilgrim's, a Texas-based company that bought a turkey processing plant from WLR Foods in 2001, said in April it would cease all operations at the plant by Oct. 1 if a buyer was not found.

Close to a third of all turkey production in Virginia was destined to disappear, which could have been a disastrous loss to the Shenandoah Valley. The poultry industry is the largest segment of the state's agricultural economy, with more than $690 million in annual cash receipts for chickens, turkeys and eggs. The turkey industry is worth $177 million to the valley in sales alone.

About 170 growers who supplied the plant with birds and close to 1,300 employees would have suffered if the plant shut down, federal officials said.

Now, the farmers can control their business and have a place to sell their product, Warner said.

Good news...

Family's employee-owned grocery chain still growing

The News-Gazette Online has a nice story about Niemann Foods which owns 63 grocery stores under the SuperValu's County Market name. The chain is booming and third of the chain is owned by the employees. It is great to here about success stories like this but I also wish the media would not call stores that are less than half-owned by their employees as employee-owned. Although it doesn't mention the mechanism of employee-ownership, from previous situations it is likely that it is an ESOP situation.

USATODAY.com - Endangered species: US programmers

USATODAY.com - Endangered species: US programmers:

"Some experts think they'll become extinct within the next few years, forced into unemployment or new careers by a combination of off-shoring of their work to India and other low-wage countries and the arrival of skilled immigrants taking their jobs."

It is estimated that 100,000 American programmers are unemployed with many more being underemployed, yet many corporations are clamoring to increase the cap H-1B visas so more foreign programmers can be employed. A group called The Programmers Guild is trying to resist the proposed increase.

Remember in the seventies and the eighties that union workers were told to accept the loss of manufacturing jobs because your children will be programming computers. Well the end is near for the profession in the United States. Many schools are dropping their computer majors (University of Dallas for instance) because of the dim prospect of jobs for the profession.

Remember this because nowadays people are told to have their sons and daughters study molecular genetics in hope for jobs their. But how soon will these jobs simply be sent overseas, too.

We are rapidly becoming a country of Wal-Mart and McDonald's employees. Let no one be dismayed when ten or fifteen years from now Wal-Mart announces that it's employees are being replaced by robots.

The solution to this problem is distributism. As long the morality of the marketplace is the norm for business we will continue to see more of jobs taken overseas or replaced by technology.

In Bhutan, Happiness is King

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal (10/13/2004 pg. A14) has an article about Tashi Wangyal who chucked his beautiful girlfriend and an attractive job offer in London to go back to his native Bhutan. I don't think it is too unusual for someone to go back home to his native country but what is so unusual is that the King of Bhutan has thrown out the usual measures of progress, instead using an model which he calls "gross national happiness" which has many people taking note. One of the biggest barriers to distributism is the constant drumbeat that every countries economic well-being is tied to its GDP growth rate. While many economic systems (including distributism) claim to produce a better GDP over the long-run, distributism comes out much better in any system which involving quality of life. Here are some more articles about GNH here and a travel article here .

Berlin STILL Hasn't Learned!

This very disturbing report comes from the controversial news website Rense.com.

During World War One, Chesterton wrote many words condemning Germany's attacks on Belgium and France. He was one of the few in England during the inter-war years that warned of the rise of Hitler and Naziism. Though he died in 1936, he saw what was coming down the pike for Germany and Europe.

And though he died in 1953, Belloc lived through the Berlin Blockade, and the early years of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.

Were they alive today, they would condemn Europe's absorbtion into the EU, as well as news like this coming from the land of Beethoven. For it seems that the German government has not learned - or has refused to learn - the lessons of their recent past about the perils of expanding government power where it doesn't belong.

In the report by Michael James out of Frankfurt, the government ruled on October 8th that they will tax private personal computers that are deemed to be "Internet-capable".

They would be the first nation on Earth to do so. All households must do so before March 31, 2005, or face either crippling fines, prison time or both. The excuse for doing this is "expansion of the television and radio public services fee."

Germany's Federal Minister of culture, as James continues in his report, also wants to tax Internet-capable mobile phones.

And this is even worse. Under current German law, every privately owned television, video recorder, DVD player, radio, car radio and radio alarm clock must be registered with the government. Even if they are broken.

Or else, it's fines or jail. Or worse.

What to do? In my opinion, this is a good time to flood the Bundestag with continual protests until this tax is eliminated, as well as this odious law demanding registration of TVs and such be repealed. And never made law again in any form, under any circumstances.

And keep this campaign up until victory is won, even if it takes decades of effort! No surrender to such evil, Marxist/Fascist laws like this from the German government.

Berlin, Berlin, have you STILL not learned?

Iceland: Small is Beautiful...and Rich!

This report comes from the British magazine The Spectator, via the libertarian website Lew Rockwell.com.

It reports on how Icelanders are buying a lot of houses and into businesses in the UK. With an economic policy labeled "Thatcherite" by writer Daniel Hannan - alas, not a Distributist policy - and a foreign policy keeping it out of the European Union, Icelanders have become tycoons. They have the highest life expectancy of any nation in the world. Hannan hopes that such an Iceland may always remain.

But it won't if Iceland gets any further into the EU or remains in the UN. It is doing well, but can do better if she becomes a Distributist and pro-family state.

Readers of this blog in Iceland, please supply us with any further information to correct our analysis if it is wrong. And thank you.

Japanese Bookseller Blues

This report, dated September 28, 2004, comes courtesy of the Japan Times.

Small booksellers and book publishers overall have been hit hard ever since Japan entered its decade-plus long recession. (Some may call it a depression.) According to reporter Janet Ashby, 1,500 bookstores went out of business over seven years. Both the bad economy and a decline in readers have spurred on the growth of both book super-stores and volumes dedicated more to celebrities and TV tie-ins than anything else.

The report goes on to note that Japanese publishers have shown "weak business sense" in the face of bad economic times. A few have been able to adjust and adapt, but many refused. They either are fossilized in a "quantity be damned" or "quality be damned" mindset.

So, in many ways, these publishers are their own worst enemies. In a Distributist economy, as well as in a Capitalist economy, if you are not customer friendly, market savvy and ethical, you will be shredded. So thanks to that, as well as many other factors, book superstores pop up like poisonous mushrooms.

Small publishers and small bookstores in Japan must get together and brainstorm new plans to improve their collective lot. If they wish to defeat both Internet book sellers and the horrid super bookstores, they must bring back readers to read, especially the young.

Minnesota Mini-Radio Crusade

This bit of good news is from the computer news website Wired, which was also put on the controversial news website Rense.com.

The Walker Art Center of Minneapolis is behind a project that helps folks to start their own micro-radio station. Broadcasting at a maximum power of one watt, these stations can reach a maximum of 200 feet. but the purpose of this project is to show how big business is swallowing up the radio airwaves, where a lot of folks still get their news and opinions.

It is important to note that the major groups pushing for "radio diversity" are - alas - on the American far left. Therefore, they would more than likely ban any voice advocating right-wing or centrist politics. And if Distributism ever got a voice on the airways, they would seek to squish it on an ideological basis.

But this effort in Minneapolis is a noble effort and - as far as America is concerned - should be replicated and adapted to its various regions.

Along with it must continue efforts to break both big business' hold on mainstream radio, as well as hindering big government/Socialist groups from gaining control of it as well.

Bavaria's Marker Minders

This article from the libertarian website LewRockwell.com, written by Sabine Barnhart, is about one of the last surviving small offices for self-government in Bavaria. It has - thankfully - resisted being swallowed up by government centralizers in Berlin, or their new masters in Brussels. How long for, we don't know. But long may it survive...and thrive.

Guinea-Bissau Up In Arms...Again

This report comes from the pro-globalist Associated Press via MyWay News, dated October 6th. The tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, a former colony of Portugal, has risen in revolt yet again. The armed forces chief of staff was killed in the revolt. The cause of it, according to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., was due to 500 soliders returning from UN so-called "peacekeeping" duties in Liberia. The soldiers went unpaid for the last six months. Negotiations between the rebels and the government will be continuing.

According to the AP report, Guinea-Bissau is one of the world's poorest countries. It relies on fishing and cashew nut exports to keep it alive. There are offshore oil reserves, but no multinational will drill there due to the unstable political scene.

This nation of 1.4 million could be a perfect test case for implementing Distributist economic and political principles. It is small enough to be a "laboratory" to prove to the people of Africa that they can be pulled out of their nightmare world they've dwelt in since the Sixties.

Also, since many white and black farmers in Zimbabwe and South Africa are targeted by their neo-Marxist governments for destruction, that state could use their expertise to begin reviving itself from destitution. It should be a mutually beneficial relationship, at least economically.

The potential for a Distributist, multi-racial state in Guinea-Bissau is there. Please God, folks learning about Distributism here and elsewhere will begin building it soon.

Resisting the Sexual Revolution in Nova Scotia

As mentioned back on August 31 on this blog:

Sexual activity is ONLY moral and licit between a man and a woman within the bonds of unbreakable matrimony. Any other type of sexual activity is objectively wrong, no matter what national governments, academia, media and judiciaries say otherwise.

Thanks be to God Almighty, there are the beginnings of resistance to imposing so-called "same sex marriage" in Canada.

Nova Scotia recently became the 6th province to allow so-called "same sex marriage". Around that very day, a minister of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada sent the province's Deputy Registrar General notice that he will no longer register any marriages he officiates with the province. This news comes from the Canada Family Action Coalition, in an October 1st dated bulletin.

The letter by Rev. Louis H. How is very elequent and forceful. It is hoped here at the Review that any Canadian priest, minister, rabbi, mullah or other clergyman will take Rev. How's example to heart and do likewise.

As we again stated here on August 31st:

Distributism is committed to destroying the Sexual Revolution worldwide, even if it takes - literally - centuries of effort.

Belloc and Chesterton would expect no less.

Global Tax is Global Tyranny

According to a September 19th article from the French news agency AFP, as reported by Yahoo News, French President Jacques Chirac has proposed a scheme for a global tax to raise US$50 billion to "fight poverty" in the Third World.

Collecting a global tax implies a global authority to regulate said tax. Said global authority would become a global tyranny. To quote the famous line from Lord Acton: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Taxing people's income to fight poverty will not work. De-centralizing their economic and political structure, along with moral and ethical re-generation will. It will not cure poverty for good, for Our Lord Jesus told us that "The poor you will always have with you." But we can help to alleviate their misery by taking such steps.

Chirac is a Euro-Socialist and a globalist. He believes in and loves Socialism and globalism. So do those who have done this report for a so-called "global anti-poverty tax". In the end, it will make the Third World's problems worse.

Distributism will make it better. It won't cure it, but it will make it better.

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